History of Information Technology

The term "information technology" came about in the 1970s. Its basic concept, however, can be traced back even further. Throughout the 20th century, an alliance between the military and various industries has existed in the development of electronics, computers, and information theory. The military has historically driven such research by providing motivation and funding for innovation in the field of mechanization and computing. Another view by those of us growing up and working in this era is that the post World War II baby boomers were being trained in computer programming and many liked it. Their less technical collegians were attracted to finance and marketing. For a period of time the computer industry became a hot bed of development when the new generation of computer programmers evolved into full scale developers producing a massive industry packed with products for almost every business. The military began paying attention to the developments, virtually after the fact. They became fascinated with global satellites and soon, computer controlled equipment and weapons. Meanwhile, the 'geeks' computerized the world. Marketing was looking for ways to fool the next guy. Finance was looking for ways to get some attention. With the computers and software spawned by the technology industry they awakened to sales histories and accounting spreadsheets. It did not take long to pull the wool over everyones eyes, except the programmers who wrote the software to help them. We now see spreadsheet based products with half the ingredients sold under the ruse of being "extra light". The concern for the future is when the ingredients turn to using raw waste products to cut costs and marketing tries to sell you Special Health Ingredient Treatments. Just remember that no biological organism can live in its own waste.

The first commercial computer was the UNIVAC I. It was designed by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly for the U.S. Census Bureau. Since then, four generations of computers have evolved. Each generation represented a step that was characterized by hardware of decreased size and increased capabilities. The first generation used vacuum tubes, the second used transistors, the third integrated circuits, and the fourth used integrated circuits on a single chip. The late 70s saw the rise of microcomputers, followed closely by IBM’s personal computer in 1981.